


Proxy War

by Rinna



Category: Constantine (2005), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angels, Dark, Demons, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magic, Magical Realism, Monsters, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Religious Conflict, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Slow Build, Suicide Attempt, Superpowers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-26
Updated: 2014-02-18
Packaged: 2017-12-06 14:39:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/736809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rinna/pseuds/Rinna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes is not only is he the world's only supernatural consulting detective, he is also one of few people who can walk between the worlds of humans and demons. When John Watson comes to him about what he believes was the murder of his sister, Sherlock shrugs him off until he finds out there is much more to John than meets the eye, and that investigating what looked like a suicide makes them both a target of the demons that sleep below...<br/>Constantine Movie-AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Sherlock looks around.  
This is what it always starts with, looking for clues other people have overlooked, and they always have.  
That's why they call him in the first place.

The hotel is old, the flower-ornamented wallpaper having turned a sickly nicotine yellow a long time ago, strips of it limply hanging off the wall.

Detective Inspector Lestrade stands next to him, wringing his hands and waiting for Sherlock to share any of his findings.

"See, I don't know why you keep calling me in for cases as trivial as this," Sherlock says slowly, but he is by no means stopping whatever it was he was doing, his eyes flitting around at a rapid pace, his posture rigid, and his hands twitching, all tell-tale signs that there is a mystery to be solved. If he really thought this wasn't worth his time, he would have taken one look at the room and disappeared, and they both know it, which is why there is a certain air of defiance to Lestrade's answer.

"You know why," he replies, "I'm not gonna say it, you're not gonna make me flatter you."

Sherlock narrows his eyes at him.

"That's not what I meant."

Lestrade is the first to look away, he always is.  
The subject of this unspoken conversation is not new to either of them - for all that Sherlock gets called to crime scenes to deduce and observe, to find what only he is capable of finding, Lestrade has a gift of his own.

Sherlock does not miss the way Lestrade puts his shaking hands into the pockets of his trench coat, trying to shield himself away.

"I explained it to you before," he says, and the calm in his voice is a forced one,  
"It doesn't work like that."

Lestrade has what they - he and other people who know, other people who are different - call the eye, the ability to reconstruct the past by touching objects, the only witnesses that no one pays any heed to and that no one else can ask.  
Some abilities come with a price, however. It is strenuous work to touch an object and not go too far back in time, as nothing is ever forgotten.  
It requires a lot of concentration to find the last person who sat in that chair, or who touched this table, and it lets the boundaries between past and present, here and then, reality and hallucination blend into each other until they disappear, and it scares Lestrade, the thought of being trapped in the past with no way back.

He wants to tell Sherlock sometimes, what it's like for normal people, those who don't embrace the thought of the world they live in becoming nothing but a portal for all kinds of creatures, a chess board with all of them just being pawns in a giant game God and the devil are playing against each other, neither of them apparently intent on outdoing the other.

"Fine," Sherlock says sharply, "I can do it without an assistant."

Lestrade just grimaces at him, and Sherlock can basically feel him think, chances are high that at some point he will change his mind.

There is a lot of broken glass on the floor, empty frames propped up against the walls, the furniture, the door.  
Sherlock looks at Lestrade, willing him to understand - things can either be caught in mirrors or break out of them, but only those stupid enough to get caught, or curious enough to find their way here. The rotten souls of the inhabitants of Hell, too stupid to remember this is not where they belong, longing for light and sound and smell, now devouring what they once had been.

Sherlock crouches down to have a look at the floor. There is a small trail of blood, leading from the now empty frames outside of the room and out onto the street, clear enough that even the idiots of the forensics team couldn't have missed it.  
Something came out then.

"Whatever was in here is out there now, so I guess I will have to take care of it," Sherlock sighs.  
As he gets up he can already feel boredom extend its familiar fingers again.

"That's it?" Lestrade asks, and his disappointment would almost be comical if the circumstances were different.

"The only way you are going to catch these demons is when you catch them eating a child," Sherlock says cruelly,  
"They are too dumb for anything else. Bad news for parents, potentially good news for police work."

Lestrade sighs, deep and weary, and rummages for a flat pack of cigarettes in his coat pockets.  
He offers one to Sherlock when he finds them, but the other man just shakes his head and rolls up his sleeve to reveal a nicotine patch.

Lestrade looks at the patch and frowns.

"You have to do more than that, you know," he comments, but Sherlock ignores him.

"Let me know if you notice anything... unusual," he says instead and raises his eyebrows mockingly, like a man fascinated by nothing and no one any more.

They step outside, passing Anderson and his forensics team on the way, and Anderson, as usual, goes out of his way to sneer at Sherlock.

There are still people in London who can live in blissful ignorance, who can pretend the monsters under their beds don't exist, and Anderson, who should know better, is one of them.  
He, who has probably seen more evidence to the contrary than most other people, seems to recline even further into disbelief each time he faces the undeniable.

Lestrade pities him, but more often than not he wants to be like him.

"That was a quick visit, I must say," Anderson says to Sherlock, his hands in rubber gloves that are bloody at the fingertips, carefully raised up and away from his face.

"Yes, I wouldn't want to interfere with your important job of digging through bloody carcasses for too long," Sherlock snaps back, and the argument would go on for longer if it weren't for something catching Lestrade's eye, forcing him to groan involuntarily.

Sherlock is at his side, instantly interested, and locks eyes with a man standing on the other side of the police tape, his posture rigid, perfectly upright even though he is ever so slightly leaning on a simple, polished wooden cane on his right. 

A soldier at attention.

He is short, wrapped up in a puffy winter coat. There is nothing out of the ordinary about this man's appearance, and yet something makes him impossible to overlook. Sherlock looks closer, but he is sure - this stranger, whoever he is, is not a half-breed.

"You know him," Sherlock says to Lestrade, who has been glancing at him in surprise.

"Relax, I don't think he will be interesting enough for you. He's just the brother of a woman who committed suicide last week, Harriet Watson. We closed the investigation pretty quickly, it was a very obvious suicide case, but he keeps following me, demanding for me to reopen the case. All the evidence speaks against him, but he claims my team is made up of a bunch of idiots who wouldn't be able to tell a murder from a suicide if someone snuck up on them and slit their throats."

Sherlock snorts at this, pleasantly surprised.

"He must be a smart man," he says, the mirth only reluctantly leaving his eyes,  
"After all it's true, and I'm glad that someone took the time to make you aware of this simple fact who is not me."

He focuses once more, his eyes not leaving Watson for one second.

"So, what happened to his sister?"

"She jumped off the roof of the psych ward at St. Bart's. History of alcohol and drug abuse, several failed attempts at rehab, and towards the end of it all intense hallucinations."

Sherlock raises an eyebrow, suddenly abandoning all personal space between him and Lestrade.

"Oh, she saw things?" he whispers lowly, "I wonder what that must have felt like, don't you?"

Lestrade flinches in earnest this time, with nothing saving him from the intended jab of these words.

Lestrade has touched a sore spot with both of them. Before he can apologise, Sherlock has stepped back and left him to his own regrets.

The way he turns, looks back at Watson, two things are immediately clear:  
One, John Watson, however unlikely his story is, has captured his attention, and two, since his sister committing suicide is the simplest conclusion, this is also the one Sherlock is going to avoid from now on.  
Lestrade half expects Sherlock to call the man over, but they walk past him, their eye contact breaks and the moment is over.

 

Being around half-breeds is the closest Sherlock will ever come to being uncomfortable.  
He understands their power in theory, knows they don't just make empty threats or promises.  
They are the only creatures he is incapable of beating, simply because they are not human.

Still he tries to stride into the morgue at St. Bart's as if he belongs there, as if the business that brings him here is nothing out of the ordinary.  
But it is, and nothing here is ordinary. Places like this look different to people who know death is neither the white light at the end of the tunnel, nor the promise of being reborn as a daffodil in your next life.

"Oh, such a rare visitor."

Gabriel is seated on one of the operating tables with one leg dangling down when Sherlock comes in, looking as if he just had a chat with one of the corpses.

"Gabriel," Sherlock says and nods in acknowledgement, but the angel pouts at him.

"It's Molly in here, did you forget?"

The woman in front of Sherlock runs her hands down her body, the gesture all Gabriel, cocky and amused.

"Why are you still using this form?" Sherlock asks him, "Doing this mundane sort of work..."

Gabriel leaves the table and comes closer, his eyes glinting. 

"I do it because unlike you, I am not above doing what the Lord has assigned me to do. All of you humans, but especially you, have ignored his pleas for long enough that you are now deaf to them.  
This is it, Sherlock. He told you everything you needed to do, and you still didn't do it. Now you are paying the price."

Gabriel, no, the woman, Molly, smiles at him. It looks unnatural, stretched too wide, like someone who has watched people smile but never got to try it himself.

One thing about Gabriel's statement is true - he is doing his job. A morgue at a hospital in a large city is the best place to find innocent souls trapped in their rotting bodies and guide them to the eternal realm, but it doesn't require him to dress up as a human, him, an angel with no gender, who is just playing at being a woman.

It just shows how little regard all of the half-breeds have for humans, and even though Sherlock knows the world's population is made up of idiots, this blatant display of human inadequacy leaves a sour taste in his mouth.

No. He is better than that, better than any ordinary human being.

Gabriel and Sherlock don't like each other, Gabriel because he does not like the fact God decided to equip some people with special abilities to spice up the game, and Sherlock simply because his appreciation has to be earned.  
They let each other do their work, and sometimes not being enemies is a close to being friends as you can get.

"Why have you come here?" Gabriel asks, and Sherlock scoffs at him.

"What, you don't know?"

Gabriel frowns in displeasure.

"I am by no means omnipotent."

"Oh, my mistake," Sherlock retorts and smirks at him, "The way you were reciting the Lord's plans just now definitely made it sound as if you were."

He waits for it to settle, the remark that was meant to hurt the angel's pride, and they do have a lot of it.  
Gabriel is just as trapped on earth as every ordinary human being is, and Sherlock makes sure he remembers it. It might well be the only weapon he has.

"I am looking for a body, Harriet Watson, died a week ago, case closed, but I am aware of how long it takes you to get rid of bodies, so I know she is still here."

Gabriel knows better than to wait for Sherlock to explain himself, seeing as this is how it usually goes.  
Some will declare a case as closed, Sherlock will appear and object, and Sherlock will end up being right, so these days they skip the discussion that the angel never wins.

"It is for a case, isn't it?" he says despite himself, and the way Sherlock is rolling his eyes at the question is perhaps deserved.

"Have I ever been known to look at corpses in your cellar for fun?"

Gabriel smirks at him.

"As if I would ever be able to tell the difference with you."

He comments no further and goes to pull open a drawer with paperwork for Harriet's file before choosing the right compartment.  
The metal of the compartment squeals in protest as the freezer cabinet is pulled open, revealing the body of a woman in her early forties. To Sherlock, the resemblance is undeniable, in her facial features, the sand-coloured hair, even the pinched frown line between her eyebrows. Harriet and John Watson were twins.  
Harriet's skin however, has a blue sheen to it now, her veins nothing but dead lines on her body, pathways that lead nowhere.

"She jumped from a roof and hit a skylight on her way down," Gabriel says, glancing up from the file, and it is a waste of breath to say what Sherlock can see for himself.  
Her whole body is marked with small cuts from shards of glass, and there are bruises everywhere, some bigger and darker in places where there was a direct and especially powerful impact to her body.

"She could have been pushed," Sherlock says simply, "She fell sideways. People who throw themselves with intent usually fall head first."

"Did no one tell you she left a letter?"

Sherlock's eyes light up.

"Oh, this is great."

"What is?" Gabriel asks, but the moment Sherlock opens his mouth to explain, something breaks through the window, something so enormous in fact, that it not only takes the window with it, but most of the wall that it is attached to. Something big with horns and fangs.

Having overcome his momentary surprise, Gabriel extends his wings, filling the room with light. It is a light even humans can feel, a warm caress like the sun breaking through the clouds, leaving behind a feeling of comfort and safety. For creatures like the one Gabriel is now fighting however, the light is like poison, eating away at their core.

"Retreat to the realm from whence you came!" Gabriel shouts, his voice booming, his wings shining brightly enough to blind his opponent. The ffect is only temporary, as the demon swings a gigantic paw in rage, brushing Gabriel aside and throwing him into the nearby wall, which also collapses, burying him under a pile of rubble.

It is the moment the demon focuses on him that Sherlock realises he came here practically unarmed save for a slender axe which he draws from his coat and aims at one of the demon's eyes.  
Sure enough he hits it, and the answering roar is loud enough to cause debris to trickle from the ceiling.  
Sherlock knows that if this continues, the entire hospital building the morgue is housed in will collapse, but he is out of means to fight back.  
He raises his head and shouts as loud as he can.

"Hey! A full-fledged demon slipped past your omniscient watch! Consider this my prayer, you lazy bastard!"

Then he immediately has to start dodging the recovered monster's attacks, which would have been much more difficult if it still had both eyes.  
With every blow to the floor or the walls however, the whole building starts to shake, and when the creature eventually starts ripping the ceiling apart, whatever it is on the floor above them starts caving in.

That's when Sherlock notices the screams for the first time.  
Everyone is screaming. Normal humans are unable to see demons, so they must think an earthquake of some sort is happening, and who has ever heard of an earthquake in central London?  
There will be people trying to evacuate, people unable to escape, and it reminds Sherlock that he might be in danger as well. He stops paying attention for a few precious seconds and one of the fluorescent lamps comes lose and nearly strikes him dead.  
Narrowly having defended his life against a set of light bulbs, Sherlock decides that without his weapons, the only one who can save them is Gabriel, and so he runs over to where the angel has been buried in rubble and starts digging him out. He has to stop more than once to drag the demon's attention away from what he is doing, and the rocks and crumbled pieces of wall are heavy, sometimes too heavy to lift.

The building gives another sharp lurch, and suddenly there is a hissing noise, coming towards them as if something was travelling the air at great speed, aiming exactly at the spot where Gabriel lies.  
Sherlock averts his head just in time, when suddenly a giant spear, longer than any spear ever built by humans pierces the pile of rock, and Gabriel's hand appears and firmly grasps it.  
The remaining rubble is blown away, and Sherlock has to duck into a corner and hide his head in his hands to avoid getting hit by any of the pieces.

Once again the angel opposes the creature in all his glory, the light now radiating from him with a force much stronger than before, wings stretched wide, the spear now held in both hands, raised above his head.  
With a cry of warning the angel throws the spear at the demon's chest, hitting it right in the heart.

First there is a cry loud enough to make the ceiling give way entirely.  
The thick spray of blood is next, but then Gabriel is at Sherlock's side, clutching his biceps and screaming at him to hold on.  
The beast seems to erupt from the inside out, trashing and howling, and Gabriel grabs Sherlock and thrusts upwards, through the ceiling and outside with powerful flaps of his wings.

The angel lands them on the tower of St. Bartholomew's the Less church which is a safe distance away, but the screams, the waves of dust, everything still reaches them here.

"Tell me, messenger of the Last Judgement, is this what it's going to be like?" Sherlock gasps, holding his sides.  
The scene unfolding before them truly looks apocalyptic.

"For once in your life, don't joke now," is all that Gabriel retorts.  
Sherlock looks at him and it is him now, the disguise of the woman is gone and before him is the angel in all his beauty, the long, flowing hair, and the face that seems to change slightly with every time Sherlock blinks. He cannot be described, he just is, and suddenly Sherlock understands why he uses the disguise - without it, it would be apparent even to human beings what he is, of such ethereal beauty are his features. He is otherworldly.

"What was that spear?" he asks, because his mind prompts him to analyse now and rest later, the way it always does.

"Are you wounded?" Gabriel asks him, as if only a person who has severely hit his head would think about such things now.

"I am fine," Sherlock bites out, irritated, "Now tell me."

"Lancea Longini," Gabriel answers and his eyes suddenly seem distant, as if he was looking far beyond the chaos as he rests near the cross of his father.  
"The Spear Of Longinus. The spear that pierced The Son's side, its tip still coated with his blood. The spear that my brothers and me brought back so long ago, to rest against His throne."

Sherlock huffs.

"You used to be warriors once, you and your brothers."

Gabriel doesn't look at him.

"It is not our fight any more."

There is a pause in which neither of them speaks. Sherlock's hair is grey with dust and he has barely survived, but his thoughts are already racing ahead, trying to make sense of what is unfolding around him, because he is certain that something of great importance is happening, has known from the moment he has looked John Watson in the eye.

"He turned his eye towards me and sent the spear to my aide," Gabriel says, and there is an awe in his voice that makes Sherlock's insides flare with sudden anger.

"Nonsense. It is all a big game and he felt the need to retaliate. He has lost this round, Gabriel. People have died."

"Don't act as if you care. You are just angry because you were interrupted."

"Of course I am angry!" Sherlock shouts, thumping his fist on his own thigh.

"This attack has told me everything I needed to know, namely that something important enough exists that our friend Satan down there was willing to bend the rules to get rid of the evidence, to threaten me to let it go or else, but he should know me better than that, oh he should know!"

"You are by now means important enough to warrant any such effort," Gabriel says dryly, but Sherlock has gotten up and is pacing, gesticulating wildly.

"You may be able to ignore it, but you know the rules as well as I do. No high demons on earth, no humans in hell, that's why it is punishment of the highest order if a human being gets sent down there. No higher demons on this plain, no holy spears, only influencing humans, ever so gentle nudges to prompt them to kill or save each other. Now you might not care why this has happened, but I want to know."

"You always do."

Sherlock only smirks in return.

 

"You have to help me find John Watson," Sherlock says to Lestrade, briskly trying to outwalk him in order to corner him in the corridor of the Scotland Yard building, which proves to be difficult seeing as he has to zigzag through all kinds of people that have been deposited there, the aftermath of the attack on the hospital.

There are a lot of them and there will be hundreds more, people looking for friends and relatives, insurance claims, people in shock, and it is as much the task of the police as it that of the fire brigade to not smother these people in bureaucracy but to show them that someone is there for them.  
Distantly Sherlock thinks that even though Lestrade is a detective inspector, who is responsible for homicides and has nothing to do with such simple tasks as this, seems to be the right person to help out, disgustingly over-empathetic as he is.

"I know I often tell you now is not the time and you won't listen, but now is really not the time," Lestrade says, sparing Sherlock only so much as a glance.  
"It might have escaped your notice, but a bloody hospital caved in this morning, so I am kinda busy with that."

"Oh please, people die all the time!" Sherlock retorts, and the quiet that settles around him is deafening.  
Lestrade halts abruptly and narrows his eyes at Sherlock, but before he can say anything, one of the people in the hallway rises from his chair.

It is a stout man in a lab coat, and his whole body seems badly proportioned, his head too small for his massive body, his arms too thin and his hands too big. He does not have a lot of hair left on his head, and what is there is currently pressed flatly to his forehead with sweat. His eyes are small and sit deep in his face, his eyebrows hardly even visible. His big chin is as wobbly as the rest of him, and his round, bronze-rimmed glasses are cracked at the right eye.

"Did you just say John Watson?" he asks, blinking twice.

Sherlock is next to him in two long strides.

"Who are you?"

"My... My name is..."

Sherlock scoffs.

"Oh, who cares what your name is, how do you know John Watson?"

The man visibly shrinks, and he tries to look anywhere but at Sherlock.

"We were mates at university. He contacted me recently to tell me he was back in London...He lives in a flat in Barking right now."

Sherlock claps his hands together.

"Excellent."

He rummages in his coat pockets before producing a small notebook and a pen from one of the inner pockets, and holds it out to the man with no further comment.

The man first looks down at the paper then slowly back up.

"I am... not sure John would appreciate it if I gave his address..."

Sherlock's face is unmoving.

"You didn't just tell me all of this in order to not give me the most vital piece of information," he says, matter-of-factly.  
"You have spoken to John, you haven't met him yet. The call happened a while ago, yet something made you waver, maybe he sounded too different, maybe he sounded too much like the person you knew, but you did not want to see him, not straight away, you told yourself day after day, 'call John Watson, he might need it!' oh, see, now you are frowning, which means you knew he would need it, maybe a friend to talk to, but you didn't want to possibly listen to his problems, the problems of someone you haven't seen in years, no, you are a busy man, you have problems of your own, you have a life! Except that you have not, and now you wonder about John and what he's doing and if he is okay, and you read about what happened to his sister, but now it is awkward, yet you want to help, you always do, but you are a coward, that is your big problem, you see problems but you don't want to solve them, just like that one time when you found out your wife was having an affair, but what does that matter now? She has left, anyway. This time, this time you want to make it right, and all of a sudden there is a man asking for John Watson, who knows, maybe he can help?"

Sherlock takes a breath, and his eyes focus on the stranger.

"The answer Mr. Stamford, is yes. Yes, I can help."


	2. Chapter 2

Out of all the things Stamford could ask right now, acutely aware of everyone's stares as he is, he picks the question that is the first one to come to his mind.

"How did you know my name?"

"It is on your lab coat," Sherlock says and extends the notebook again.

 

Sherlock glances at the pad with the bells to all of the apartments.  
There are many of them, a few ones that don't have a name on them yet, just scratched out plastic or remains of stickers ripped away, but there is no bell with the name Watson next to it.  
Very recently returned to London, then.  
There are two bells without names for the ground floor, one for the first floor, one for the second floor, and four on the fourth floor. Sherlock presses the one for the second floor.  
There is a moment of silence, then the intercom comes to life with a sharp buzz. John Watson is clearing is throat and exhales audibly through his nose. He sounds as if he got up from something, most likely a chair, and that he would rather not have.

"Mr. Watson,"Sherlock begins without preamble, "I have come to talk to you about the murder of your sister."

"Who are you?" John asks, and the catch in his voice is immediate, he has to clear his voice again to make it disappear. There is another pause. The next words sound uncertain.  
"No one has ever called it murder before."

"That's because no one else is me."

"How did you even know that this was the right bell? ...Wait, you didn't press all of them, did you?"

Sherlock makes a dismissive sound.

"Of course I didn't Mr. Watson, it was obvious."

"Obviously someone told you."

"Please, don't insult me."

Sherlock can feel that the man is gauging his own patience, knows that he is trying to judge whether this is a joke or not. It's what all of them do at first.

"Okay, how did you know."

The smile Sherlock allows himself is a quick, almost involuntary one. All conversations lead up to this, a moment of demonstration, and it feels like stretching his limbs after having sat in one position for too long, even the simplest deduction is somewhat of a spark, a routine exercise.

"As I said, it's obvious. The first time I saw you you were leaning on a cane, but not heavily, you were focussing on something else, Lestrade, or perhaps me, so you all but forgot that you were supposed to be needing it. You remembered when we left because you stumbled, the point being you might not need that cane at all, except that you convinced yourself that you needed it, and obviously your landlord was convinced, too, so the fourth floor was out of question right away. Now he wanted to give you the ground floor flats but he must have said all kinds of patronising things about your leg, so for you it was about pride, even though there is no lift you could use, you, John Watson, are a soldier, and you would not let yourself be defeated by a couple of steps, now would you?"

Sherlock can't hear John breathing. Then the door buzzer sounds. 

"You must have talked to someone," John says when Sherlock reaches his floor and he opens the door for him to enter.

"Oh, of course that's what you would think," Sherlock replies, a touch smugly.

"There is no way you could have figured all of this out by yourself."

"Why, was I wrong?"

John raises an eyebrow at him.

"No," he says pointedly and gestures towards a solitary chair for Sherlock to sit down on, "It is because there was nothing wrong with any of what you have said that I am sure."

Sherlock looks around. It is just this room, a table with a laptop and a desk lamp on it, his bed on the opposite end of the room. No pictures, no trinkets. The other two rooms are just a small bathroom and a kitchen tiny enough to not even have a table.

"I admit that you having been a soldier was just guesswork based on the impression that I had of you the first time I saw you when I left that..." he makes sarcastic air quotes with his fingers, "'crime scene' in Fortune Green, but now it has become much more obvious. The name is Sherlock Holmes, by the way."

"Obvious, how so?" John asks, predictably, and Sherlock makes him aware of his posture, the tan lines on his wrist, how the way his boots are scuffed off gives away his brisk walking style even though he has nothing to run from any more, and of course the way his pistol bulges below his jacket, characteristic for a SIG P226, the service pistol of the British Army.

"You must be very wary of me to be armed in your own flat," Sherlock says, but John only averts his eyes.

"As amazing as that was," John says as he turns his back on Sherlock to go and make some tea,  
"You've already said you are strictly not here because of me."

Perhaps lucky for Sherlock, John does not see his eyes widen, nor does he see the jerky movement of surprise the other man is unable to hide in time. 

"Pardon?"

John fills an ancient steel kettle with water, puts it on the equally old stove and opens a cabinet above the counter to take out two mugs. Without looking at Sherlock, he smiles. It is a sad smile, but it is a smile all the same.

"Harriet. You mentioned my sister."

Sherlock blinks at him. The feeling is back, this feeling that John is something else, something more, but it starts to become so frustrating that even though Sherlock can read him, this part of John Watson seems to stay hidden even from him.

"No, I..." he takes a breath, strangely out of his depth.  
"What did you say just now?"

"I said it was amazing," John replies and shrugs, "Don't tell me that wasn't what you were aiming for. You were showing off."

"I was not," Sherlock says, indignantly.  
"I merely point out what other people seem to be incapable of picking up on."

"Same thing," John says, and emerges from the kitchen to rest against the door frame.

"Now, Mr. Holmes..."

"Sherlock, please," Sherlock says before he can stop himself, and it earns him another of those shaky smiles that almost seem to slip out before John can stop them.

"Tell me why you think my sister was murdered."

"I have to ask you something first," Sherlock says, hands folded in front of his face, elbows resting on his knees.  
"What do you believe in?"

John's forehead slowly knits into a frown.

"What do you mean?"

"Hell, for example. Do you believe in it?"

"Of course not!" John all but spits and turns around briskly at the first feeble whistle of the kettle.  
He takes the kettle off the stove and turns the heat off, then there is the sound of pouring and a sharp hiss - John has burnt himself.

"Please don't lie to me," Sherlock says calmly, but it must sound a little condescending, as John slams down his mug onto the table next to him as well as the pitcher with milk, some drops spill onto the carpet and his fingers.  
John heavily sits down on his bed before elaborating.

"Hell is an invention to scare people into submission. We are all sinners, Mr. Holmes, and all of us will be forgiven."

"It is Sherlock, I told you. Don't you think you are being a little naive? Or is that just hope speaking? After all you as someone who has taken lives cannot expect a lot from God any more, should Hell really exist..."

"I was an army doctor!" John snaps.

"A medical support officer!" Sherlock snaps back with equal force.  
"You were as much trained to take a life as you were to save it. Regular doctors do not carry weapons. I am unable to help you if you insist on playing the idiot, John."

"So you are asking me if Harry has killed herself!" John jumps up and is in Sherlock's space in one step, pointing a finger at him threateningly.

"Harry did not kill herself. She did not. Because if she did and Hell exists, then..."

"...Then she would be forced to relive the moment of her suicide again and again for all eternity, but bear the agony and the pain of her final moments with amplified intensity as demons gnaw on her flesh in punishment. Or so I have heard."

John steps back slowly and lowers his head. Without looking at Sherlock, he says:

"I don't know what you were trying to accomplish by coming here other than to insult me and my dead sister, but I think it would be best for you to leave now... before I do something I might regret later."

Sherlock can feel the air crackle around John. It is truly fascinating, knowing that this man that even Lestrade did not take seriously, is brimming with a determination that is almost intimidating.

"If I apologise, will you let me continue?" he asks, but before John can answer, something hits the window above his bed, leaving a long, bloody stripe.

"It looks like we are out of time," Sherlock says with a quick look at the window, and grins, a scary, excited, knowing sort of grin.

Something else hits the window, and this time John recognises the shape as that of a raven.

"What's going on here?!" he exclaims, but Sherlock raises a hand to silence him.

"I need you to tell me if there is a church nearby."

"I..." John tries to focus as more and more birds hit the window in rapid staccato.

"Yes, I think I have seen one down the road..."

"As soon as I open this door, I need you to run there as quickly as possibly and hide on the church grounds. Do not turn back and do not attempt to go anywhere else until I come and get you."

Sherlock opens the first two buttons of his shirt to reveal three necklaces with cross pendants hanging around his neck. Then he rests a hand on the doorknob.

"On my sign," he says and looks deeply into John's eyes for two heartbeats. The air around them seems to still as he begins the countdown.

"Three... two..."

The second he throws the door open the window shatters with the force of a gigantic flock of ravens pushing upon the glass, and John and Sherlock take on look at the creatures and their unnaturally read eyes, duck their heads and stumble down the steep staircase as fast as their legs allow them to.

"Go," Sherlock urges and gives John a push betwen the shoulder blades.  
Just before he does as he is told, John sees it, a large firearm, too big to be handled with one hand alone, somehow hidden beneath the stairs.  
He turns and leaves the house, running as soon as he passes the threshold, and the last thing catches out of the corner of his eye before turning a corner are the colours of fire, reds, oranges and yellows, blazing brightly as if from within Sherlock.

It has turned dark, but John has long since lost any feeling for the time or his surroundings.

It must be the adrenaline giving him the strength to pull himself up the closed church gate, but the knowledge of how to do it comes to him by instict and muscle memory alone.  
John knows how to push his feet into the small gaps between the iron bars of the gate just so, knows where to place his feet and then pulls the muscles of his arms taunt just when he has enough leverage to swing over the gate.

In this tiny moment of less than a minute, time seems to have slowed around him, and for the first time in a long while, for the briefest of seconds, John Watson is whole again.

His sweater catches on one of the gate's spikes, but John hardly notices the small ripping noise and the whole in his clothing.  
He catches his breath, but the adrenaline won't wear off, despite the distance he has put between himself and the danger.  
John stares into the direction of the noise, the angry screeching of birds, the flapping of wings, and then he smells he scent burning flesh and feathers which the air now carries.  
He starts looking for a way into the church, but all the finds are closed windows and heavily bolted doors, so after rounding half of the building, John gives up his search.

Once he focuses on it again, the sharp noise of wings cutting the air seems to have come closer, first one raven, then another, circling the curch grounds, but not attacking.  
The sound of wings begins to swell in the distance, and run runs back to the gate and arrives just in time to see Sherlock run towards him, hundreds of the creatures in his wake as if their number has not lessened in the slightest.

"Step away!" he hears Sherlock scream through the roar, and then something, a different weapon of his, pierces the lock that secured a metal chain around the gate.

John hurriedly comes close again to pull the gate open and then scrambles to push it closed once Sherlock has passed through, the soles of his shoes catching in the mud, his muscles straining with the effort.

Countless ravens hit the gate, try to hack at John and seem to scream even louder, before swooping up into the air as one to join the other birds in their circling.

"Why are they..." John gasps, once again trying to catch his breath, "Why are they doing that?"

"They are not... real ravens, obviously," Sherlock huffs equally out of breath.

It is then, at the worst possible moment, that John's strength starts to sap from him.  
He starts to feel the cold, and the confusion and the fear, all of it seep into his bones like poison.

"What the bloody hell is happening?" he screams, and his legs buckle from beneath him.

Sherlock rolls his eyes, but kneels down to where John is now pathertically slouched in the mud.

"Hush John, it's okay now."

"No, it is not!" John howls, then drops his head.

"A stranger comes into my house to ask strange questions about my sister's death and then... and then a flock of monster birds swoops into my flat and tries to kill me! Now I am trapped trespassing near a church, and you, the guy who came to visit me armed with a flame thrower, want to tell me it's okay?"

Sherlock waits for a few more of John's heavy breaths before asking:

"Are you done now?"

When John shows no indication of throwing another tantrum, Sherlock nods to himself and continues:

"I wanted to explain all of this before, but then you insisted on misunderstanding and..."

"I insisted on misunderstanding?" John gasps, but that only earns him a sharp look from Sherlock.

"If you want to hear what I have to say, stop interrupting."

John grimaces, but keeps silent.

"This morning, the hospital holding your sister's body caved in because it was attacked by a demon."

John opens his mouth in protest, but Sherlock silences him with a flick of his wrist.

"Not done yet. Due to circumstances I don't have the time to explain, I suspect it to be a targeted attack to keep me from finding out more about her death. With her body no longer available for any further observations I then decided to come and see you, and again, as soon as the topic of your sister is breached, there is an attack. All of it not exactly subtle."

Sherlock gets up.

"What now?" John asks him, his voice rough.

"The only weapon strong enough to get rid of our friends here is inside the church," Sherlock says, reloading his weapon.  
"Come on."

"Breaking into a church, of course," John mumbles, seemingly accepting defeat, and picks himself up.

Up close John can see that Sherlock's gun does not shoot regular bullets, but what seem to be small silver darts that splinter like machine gun ammunition.  
The weapon rids them of the lock on the church door, and together they raise the block of wood barring the door and throw it away.

The inside of the church is cool and still.  
Moonlight illuminates the stained glass mosaics of the windows.  
John lets out a breath he wasn't aware he was holding.

"I am looking for the fuse box," Sherlock informs John, but John isn't listening, he is staring up at a giant wooden cross behind the preacher's podium, right at the end of the walk way, unmissable.

"Get me out of here," John murmurs.

"Hm?" Sherlock isn't listening, intent on finding both the fuse box and the light switch.

"That was Harry's last request," John goes on, "For me to get her out of the psych ward. I knew she shouldn't have been in there. She needed the rehab, but she wasn't crazy. She just... She wanted me to believe her, to save her, and I didn't listen."

"Hah!" Sherlock finds the fuse box and flicks on the switches, and the whole place comes alive with light, including two small floodlights that illuminate the cross.

The screeching outside grows louder, and Sherlock throws open the doors of the church with a triumphant shout.

John whirls around just in time to see the birds turn to ashes.

Sherlock tells him many more things that night, but John feels hollow and tired, too tired for any more talk, for any more wonders and surprises, so he doesn't even protest when Sherlock tells him that he can't return to his flat.  
He just follows, follows him into the cab that takes them to Sherlock's flat, folows him up the stairs, and follows him into the unused bedroom, where he collapses onto the sheets, fully clothed.

Just before he falls asleep, John remembers something Harry used to tell him.

"I can see everything, John. I can see everything, and everything can see me."

The first thing John sees when he wakes his a pair of eyes peering into his own.  
Barely surpressing a very undignified shriek, he scrambles into a sitting position on the double bed, too large and too soft to be his own.  
He is badly disoriented for a few more moments, until the realisation hits him that the events of the previous night were not a dream, that he is not at home, and that he very well might not have a home anymore.

The person looking at him turns out to be a middle-aged lady in a floral dress who, upon being caught, gives a start and giggles.

"Sorry love," she says, still smiling, "Didn't mean to startle you, but I couldn't resist having a peek... Well, I wouldn't have done it if anyone had told me you would be able to see me, but that just proves it, there is all sorts of people around here and you never know what the cat drags in, do you now?"

"Excuse me?" is all that John manages to say in return, but when he blinks, the woman is gone as if she had never been there, and John starts contemplating with no little fear whether the death of his sister made him go crazy.

He tries out to smooth out his clothing when he notices that wrinkles might be the last of his concern. There is dried mud splashed all over him as well as a fair amount of dust, and once fully awake John starts aching, with especially his leg giving him trouble, but his cane is nowhere in sight.

The last time John went anywhere without his cane, ran and climbed things was back in Afghanistan.

He is up in an instant.

"Sherlock!" he calls and throws the bedroom door open, "Sherlock!"

He takes the stairs down to the living room in a hurry, calling out again, but when he reaches the room, Sherlock is sitting in an armchair, head tipped back, eyes closed and figertips of both hands touching, and seems to pretend not to have heard John in the slightest.

"Good morning," he says, his voice a deep rumble, and he opens his eyes slowly, almost reluctantly.

"John."

John takes one deep breath, because it feels necessary to ask a lot of questions, and all of them immediately, but the only thing that comes out is:

"I am walking."

"So I see."

"You come to my place and all of the sudden I get attacked by monster birds, religious monster birds apparently, that you fight off with an arsenal of weapons that I am pretty sure you should not be allowed to wield... and then I end up here and it turns out I can walk!" John sputters, gesticulating widly.

Sherlock raises an eyebrow at him.

"Please, do continue to amaze me with your brilliant perceptive skills, John. As amazing as your newfound ability is, if you are going to hyperventilate I suggest you sit down..."

He gestures towards and armchair opposite his own.

John stares at him for a moment but sits down, only to glare at Sherlock for a moment longer.

"Explain everything to me, from the beginning. Who are you, or... I don't know, what are you, why did you come to me... and what the bloody hell happened?"

Sherlock smirks and crosses his legs.

"I am a consulting detective to Scotland Yard. The only one in fact. Apart from pointing out what people there are not able to see because most people are stupid enough to look right past the obvious, I also alert them to many things they are not supposed to see, and by that I mean what you would probably deem... supernatural.  
I do dislike that word however, seeing as what you have seen yesterday for example is perfectly natural."

"If that was pefectly natural, how come I never saw something like it before?"

"Because it wasn't looking at you. Those ravens weren't just birds, they were demons, and such demons can only be seen if they choose to be seen... Unless you are me and a few other selected individuals. We were meant to see them. All the time."

"Demons..." John repeats slowly and looks at his hands before running one of them through his hair.

"Yes, demons. They all exist. The ones you have seen approximations of on your stupid television programs as a child when you were not supposed to, the ones under your bed your parents told you were a figment of your imagination, just that in reality, they are more horrifying than those made-up copies, and not all of them are interested in drinking your blood and eating your skin. Humans make the mistake of believing nothing exists apart from them and their immediate surroundings, whereas I have come to know that... both Heaven and Hell exist.  
I met the people I needed to meet and learned the rules I needed to know... and that's how I know that there is something not quite right about your sister's death. The attack sort of confirms my suspicions that there is something about you... maybe it's a family trait... that might be worth looking into."

John grimaces a bit.

"You love being ominous, don't you? What about the woman that was in my room this morning, then?"

Sherlock's eyes widen, making John blink at him in confusion.

"What did I say?"

"Mrs. Hudson is the land lady."

He pauses and narrows his eyes at John somewhat expectantly until John feels the need to prompt him.

"...and?"

"Mrs. Hudson has also been dead for the past seven years."

The then ensuing pause is almost comical.

"Wait, are you saying what I think you are saying?"

Sherlock gets up, and suddenly hid eyes seem to be downright blazing with the zest for action.

"Make yourself presentable, John, I think there are some people I need to introduce you to."

 

Roughly an hour later, John finds himself at the door to a nightclub, with Sherlock looking at him expectantly from his left, while what John thinks must be the bouncer in front of the door is holding out the back of a card towards him.

"When will my life start making sense again?" he asks no one in general, but Sherlock still rolls his eyes at him.

"John, please. Just answer the man's question."

John feels like clinging to his sense of normalcy however, and thus decides to further argue his point.

"We are standing in front of a nightclub at 11am."

"Night is a relative term. Some customers might feel more comfortable with being out during the night. A good establishment should cater to all its patrons needs."

"...And then there is this shifty-looking guy, no offense... is asking me to guess what is on his card?"

"You ain't exactly a princess yourself, mate," the man replies gruffly.

"No one is asking you to guess... you are supposed to see."

"But I can't!"

"You saw Mrs. Hudson."

John opens his mouth, but no good argument comes to him, so he closes it again and sighs.  
Since there is no way Sherlock will leave this be before he has been proven wrong, John takes a closer look at the card and nearly takes a step back in surprise.  
Where the bouncer held the back of the card towards him just a moment ago, he is now holding the side with the picture on it.  
John glances at both him and Sherlock to see whether this is just a joke and either of them will burst out laughing at any moment, despite the fact that Sherlock really doesn't seem to be the type to waste his time on practical jokes, but their expressions remain unchanged.

"It's a gigantic... I think I should call it a hound?"

Sherlock smiles, a crooked, closed-lip thing of a smile, but John realises he must have done something right when the bouncer steps out of his way.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Does anyone actually remember this from when I first posted it? *sweats* I'm usually no one for author's notes, it's just that I don't forget about any of my fic and I wanted to tel you that. I'm actually inept at establishing a regular writing schedule. This fic however, does now have an entirely established plot from beginning to end, something I never have when I start writing, stupid, I know - the good news is that with a firm idea in mind, writing this should go a bit easier? I don't wanna end up lying here, haha. I added more tags and more warnings, some of it is yet to come. Anyway, I know there are still a lot of loose ends in this chapter, and I hope it will make more sense with each intstallment - actually a lot of the ideas I had are now part Sherlock canon, part Constantine and then part my own invention, I hope all these different parts end up working well together.  
> Uh, enjoy? And let me know what you think, it means a bunch.

Surprisingly enough, the club is actually well visited, brimming with creatures, for the better lack of a word, some of them humanoid, most of them entirely alien-looking.

When John opens his mouth, he notices Sherlock already glancing at him warily.

John raises his hand, willing Sherlock to understand that what is to follow is by no means a panic attack. If anything, he has just resigned himself to... well, this. His world has stopped making sense the moment he decided to look for help. He wanted to get to the bottom of his sister's death, and right now he is being shoved to the side by a grey, tentacled, three eyed something.

"...so _that_ is what you meant when you said seeing the ghost of your landlady was a perfectly natural occurrence."

The grin he gets in return actually seems slightly relieved.  
John looks around, then sniffs and nods to himself.

"Ok, I've been good. You can now tell me why we're here."

Sherlock just nods, then proceeds to walk past John, who then occupies himself with watching the barkeeper, who seems to have eyes in his hair, and more than two at that.

"Oh, you smell fresh," he suddenly hears a voice next to his ear say, making him flinch.  
This patron looks mostly humanoid, like a human woman, only with pale, scaly skin and lizard eyes, and when she licks her lips John can't help noticing her tongue, perfectly split at the end.

"Sorry, do we know each other," John says, but just like that Sherlock his back, grabbing him by the bicep and steering him away.

"He's not interested," he says to the woman, and to John "Really, try to go one minute without being eaten, can you do that?"

They walk through the club all the way to its very back wall, where an old man with a long, braided beard leans against it. His eyes are sewn shut, and yet he looks up when Sherlock approaches him.

"You're brother says not to let you into until you lose the human."

John supposes he should be insulted by this, somehow.

"I forgive you that mistake, obviously you can't see very well," Sherlock sneers, "But I am human and so is Mycroft."

"Nah," the man just says and reveals row of blackened, stumpy teeth in his grin, "You're tainted, and your brother... is something else entirely."

Sherlock huffs at him.

"You're just licking his shoes because he's the one paying your bills. You can tell him I'm not losing _the human_ , because if it weren't for him, I wouldn't even be here.

"He says he's busy... talking to your parents."

Sherlock's entire frame goes rigid, his back so stiff John can feel him vibrate. Somehow he knows a line has been crossed, but he is also tiring rapidly from being confused all the time.

"Look mate," he begins, touching the old man's shoulder, but then abruptly stops speaking.  
The previously dead eyes seem to come back to life. The skin becomes more firm, the scars disappear, and suddenly an eyeball begins to roll beneath each lid.  
Suddenly two green eyes look at him.

John stumbles backwards in surprise, and as soon as the lets go, the man gives a hoarse cry and hides his face in his hands.  
John's foot catches on something, making him fall. He scrambles up almost immediately, and apology ready on his lips, but it's only when he feels Sherlock step in front of him as if to shield him, that he notices there is suddenly no sound in the entire room. The music has stopped playing, and instead of talking to each other, all the patrons of the club are now looking at him, none of them moving in the slightest.

"You know the rules," Sherlock shouts into the crowd, but something about the way his voice sounds bothers John, and when he looks at him, he knows what it is.   
There is fear in Sherlock's eyes.

"I will kill anyone who touches him," Sherlock says, and there is another beat of tense silence, until another unexpected thing happens: a trapdoor slowly opens in the floor.

"Come on, John," Sherlock says lowly, and motions for him to climb down first.

The stairs lead to a well-lit, modern looking tunnel, certainly something that was meant to be there, which may also be why John is not really surprised when he trapdoor closes behind Sherlock.  
The tunnel ends in front of a wooden, black door that looks as if it leads straight to a dungeon, but as soon as John reaches it, there is a clicking sound as if the lock is being moved mechanically, and he looks into what could pass as a normal office, the only exception being several ancient looking book cases hung with cobwebs.

Behind a big desk of dark, polished wood sits a man, and his gesture, the fingers of both hands touching at the tips, immediately reminds John of Sherlock, even when there certainly are more similarities the longer he spends looking for them.

Upon seeing Sherlock enters the room, ushering John to not just gape through the door, his brother's face contorts with anger, and he drops his hands.

"I can't believe you would bring someone like that in here," he growls, "Are you actively trying to provoke a war just to sate your boredom or are you really that tired of--"

"I had no idea!" Sherlock silences him sharply.

John takes a deep breath.

"Could someone explain to me what just happened?" he asks, not really expecting an answer, but Sherlock apparently decides to take mercy on him.

"John, this is my brother Mycroft. To me, he is largely a waste of space."

Mycroft grins humourlessly at the jab, and John feels this kind of interaction must be the result of habit, rather than serious animosity.

Besides Mycroft's name, John learns many new things that morning.  
Not only does he now have proof that demons and ghosts exist and that he is seemingly special for being able to see them, he also learns of what Sherlock and Mycroft call 'The Balance'.

Sherlock brashly calls it a game, while his brother thinks of it as more of a battle, and John doesn't know what to think of it at all, as frightening as it is to him how... logical the explanations he hears seem to him.

"You see," Sherlock says, pacing back and forth while Mycroft offers John some tea he's apparently just brewed in his little dungeon, "First they laid down some ground rules. You all know them, 'thou shalt not kill' and so forth, and you are also told of the prize at the end should you succeed, the warmth, the blinding light, then eternal rest. It's difficult though, isn't it?"

"What my brother is trying to say," Mycroft continues, giving John a smile that is equal parts pity and empathy, "Is that humans face a lot of adverse conditions that make it rather difficult for them to... stay on course, as it were. There is sickness and betrayal and hatred and a lot of other emotions you haven't even been able to make sense of yet. The bad news is that it might not be entirely up to you how well it all goes."

"Demons plant bad ideas, John," Sherlock says softly, almost carefully, and John realises they're both thinking about his sister.

"Angels usually try to stop you."

John also finds out to what extend this goes - basically everything is allowed apart from direct intervention and, in the case of angels, revelation, since normal humans are unable to see demons, but are usually quite receptive to angels.

Between these two powers there are people like Sherlock.  
Demons, true to their reputation as wicked creatures, do get restless and tired of following rules eventually. There is no hierarchy among beasts, and at times when they don't interfere with humans, they fight with each other, putting people at risk, or they simply break the rule of not intervening directly.  
Meanwhile, God's hierarchy of angels is a complex system where power and freedom come with a certain rank. Some angels guard from above, some are on earth, some are allowed to use weapons, some not.  
It can get confusing at times, and so humans like Sherlock, Mycroft and apparently John, people with the ability to see demons, are able to execute justice.

"Well, as I said already, Mycroft is mostly a waste of space. He had this fabulous idea of inviting demons into this club, to keep an eye on them..."

"Ah, I see," John says, pointing at Mycroft, whose face has once again twisted into a bitter grimace for the matter of seconds, "You don't have them under control. Well, not all of them. Wait, you're hiding down here from your own customers?"

Sherlock's grin he gives John is equal parts pride and sheer, unabashed glee.

"Clever, John," he says, "Really good."

"What about me, though? You said I'm special."

Sherlock looks hesitant for a moment, and Mycroft as surprised about that as John is, raises both his eyebrows at his brother.

"It... wouldn't do to speculate," is what Sherlock eventually settles on, and John doesn't believe him for a second.

"You asked me to find out what happened to your sister, and I will. Nothing else really matters at this point."

John nods slowly, reluctantly. Sherlock turns to his brother.

"That's why we're here. John's sister is the reason a demon tore down an entire hospital, a pretty big violation of the rules in my book, and I want to know why. I want you to send someone down to investigate."

Mycroft's face is stony.

"Out of the question."

"If you won't do it, I'll go myself."

John sees it, the way Mycroft's eyes widen a fraction, how he gathers breath to yell and then just deflates again, and it makes him sad to be the cause of it.

"You wouldn't dare," is all Mycroft eventually growls, but Sherlock just opens the door and beckons for John to leave. The conversation is over.

**

Once out of the club, out in sun waiting for a cab, Sherlock sways on the spot slightly, bumping into John.

"Are you okay?" John asks him, and then takes a closer look.  
"Jesus, did you sleep at all last night?"

Sherlock shakes his head.

"It's not something that I do, sleeping," he mumbles, and leaves it at that even though John looks at him questioningly.

He hasn't slept in so very, very long...

He isn't even aware of having closed his eyes when he opens them at the feeling of John's hand on his wrist, pulling him towards the cab.

"John, don't..." he starts to say, but the other man just shushes him.

"It's okay, meeting your brother tired me out, too."

Sherlock can't even remotely help his surprised snort of laughter.

With a soft 'come on' John pulls Sherlock the rest of the way into the cab.

"Let's get you home. You can rest, I'll let you know when we get there."

John hasn't let go of Sherlock yet, and for one wonderfully selfish moment, Sherlock thinks he could make John stay, John who is so very special, much more so than he can hope to realise.  
Sherlock doesn't get to be selfish any more, though. He was, once, and he will pay for that moment of selfishness for the rest of his life and beyond.

He isn't like his brother, he never asked to see, and was never proud of it. The first time Mycroft saw beyond their world into the next, he saw his guardian angel, the day he nearly drowned in a lake in Cotswold.  
For years after Sherlock would tell him the only reason the angel accidentally revealed himself was sheer exhaustion - Mycroft had been an incredibly fat child.

Of course this was a fantastic discovery to make, as it would probably be for any child, and from that day onwards, even though Sherlock could live up to his brother in every other aspect, that he couldn't take from him.  
Instead, he soon made the acquaintance of the ghost living in his parent's country house, a woman named Maybelle, missing most of her face.  
It didn't stop there. While Mycroft had one single encounter, and one that made him feel special and loved by the heavens above, his younger brother was tortured by apparitions almost daily.

By the time he was seventeen, he turned to the only thing that helped him not to see, but it nearly cost him the love of his parents.  
Ever since their death, Sherlock has been alone, the watchful eye of his brother cast of him out of duty rather than affection, and now there is John, a man so attached to his sibling that he is willing to face danger for her and has just like that shed all his previous beliefs...

They are alike, Sherlock thinks as he drifts off to sleep. John has just lost the last person he shared a bond with.

"Does that mean we're now bonded in loneliness?" John asks him with a chuckle, and only then Sherlock realises he has voiced his last thought aloud.

He sleeps surprisingly deeply for the thirty minutes the ride to Baker Street takes them, but in the end it's his phone and not John, which manages to wake him.  
It's a text from Lestrade, telling him to come look at a corpse.

"Do you want to come with me?" he asks John, "I know you can handle it, but if you don't want to, you can wait at the flat."

"No, it's okay," John tells him, "Being alone still doesn't feel like a good idea to me."

"She won't hurt you."

"No, _she_ won't."

 

They tip the cabbie to take them all the way up to the quays, where Lestrade and his team meet them near the bank of the Thames.

The detective grimaces when he sees John, then gruffly asks him what he is doing with Sherlock.

"He is with me now," Sherlock says as if that explains everything.

"Don't worry, I think he may be useful."

John scowls at him, but to no avail.

Lestrade leads them to the corpse, already laid out onto a stretcher, ready to be carried away.  
It's the body of a middle-aged woman, waxen and already slightly bloated. The part of her that can be seen under a linen cloth is completely naked, and in stark contrast to her pale skin there is a large area above her left breast, stitched together in a sloppy circle pattern. The stitches still sit within the flesh, and the wound even had time to heal partially.

"So someone cut her open, closed her and then threw her into the river? How does that make sense?" John asks, but Sherlock has gone silent next to him.

"Her name is Jane Mitchell," he finally mumbles, "She is one of the residential care nurses at Lexham House."

"Sherlock, I... I'm sorry," Lestrade says, "I know this must be hard."

"So you knew her, then," John states, more to himself than anyone else, "Was she..."

"Oh," Sherlock says with feeling, "She was definitely one of his best."

He extends his hand as if to touch her, but then he just lets it hover for a moment, lost in thought.

The last time he was ever selfish, she was with him.

" _Contrapasso_ ," he says, "Payment for a sin. It should only be fitting that those who have the biggest heart find themselves without one in death."

Whoever did this might not have meant for Sherlock to see her like this at all. Most demons are stupid enough to believe they can get away with killing an angel, causing a disturbance to The Balance, with no mind as to who it is they are targeting. None of them would ever attack an archangel like Gabriel, but that is because they actually posses some sense of preservation.

This woman was getting older, weaker, she had done her duty many times over and probably never expected to be attacked, to be tortured like this.  
Sherlock has long taught himself not to be affected by what he sees on a near-daily basis, but this feels oddly personal.

In the end, there is nothing to do for him at the scene, there is too little information to be gathered from one corpse before the autopsy to be able to say anything particularly concrete, and a lot of Sherlock's work consists of waiting either way, waiting for someone to slip up, to get overexcited, to kill just once to often.

He hates making assumptions when missing evidence, but after Harriet's death and the attack on John, this murder already starts to feel less random and more like part of a scheme.  
If he is hunting a serial killer however, he will need more than two killings and one feeble attempt.

Sherlock looks away from Jane's body and meets John's eyes.  
He will need to keep a close eye on him.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look! It's an update! More stuff happens! I'm actually pretty satisfied with this one. Did I mention that your comments and kudos are love? Because they definitely are.

"I want you armed."

"Hm?"

John looks up from his plate of stir fry for long enough to contemplate what he's just been told.  
He is ravenous, it feels like he hasn't eaten in days. Sherlock is eating his own spring rolls a lot more slowly, not seeming overly interested in his food at all, whereas John is already thinking about ordering more of the same.  
He can't remember ever having felt this hungry before.

"Armed, you need a weapon. Are you still good with a gun?"

John barely stops himself from flinching and swallows his entire fork full of noodles noisily.

"I am very good with a gun," he says, pointedly clamping down on the 'still' trying to slip out at the end of his proclamation. He knows it's silly to even feel remotely indignant about someone questioning his shooting abilities. Being able to kill is not something to be proud of, and yet inexplicably, John is just as proud of that as he is of any other part of his skill set.  
He can restore life and he can take it. He has that power.

Sherlock nods at him approvingly, then proceeds to look out of the window past John.   
The sun is slowly setting, murder and mayhem have made another day of their lives pass as if it were nothing special at all.

John debates whether every day of Sherlock's life is like this. It must be, John didn't even see him flinch at the two Chinese ghosts with richly decorated golden masks instead of faces that floated up from behind the bar, whereas he nearly did a double take.  
Sherlock simply told him not to be silly about it, they are simply the restaurant owner's ancestors, John, stop staring.

He is still looking for a way to explain to Sherlock that all of this is foreign to him, and that he can't be expected to adjust to the presence of an entire world besides his own in a mere couple of days.  
John is already adjusting better than most, he is sure of it, simply by not giving himself enough breathing space to question anything that is happening to him.

Then however, he remembers the demon looking like an old man, and how for seconds eyes of near translucent grey had looked at him. Something within him has changed. He has certainly not lived a normal life before, but now he is able to see and even feel so much more than he thought possible before, and it is a lot to deal with.

"Just ask your question," Sherlock tells him calmly, and John think the other man must have watched him for a while now, reading him accurately enough to sense his confusion getting the best of him once more.

"When did you first see... all of this?"

The question is asked cautiously, quietly. John doesn't want to ask something too personal, but all of this feels like it is, like he has just become part of Sherlock's mysterious, forbidden world.

Sherlock clearly contemplates whether to tell him or not for a moment, and John half expects to be brushed off or snapped at for being nosy, until he hears the answer, given somewhat tentatively:

"...I was twelve."

"That must've been hard," John says, and doesn't mean it to be some shallow and by now unneeded consolation, it's just a statement.

"Terrifying," Sherlock corrects him, unblinking, and John can see his jaw clench for a moment.

"We should get back soon," he says then, "We shouldn't stay in Chinatown after dark."

They leave soon after, and it isn't until they are looking for another cab to hail that John notices how quiet it is.  
Even though certain parts of London are more quiet that you would expect, it's never this quiet.  
It isn't late either, the sun is only just setting, and the more John concentrates on it, the less he seems to be able to hear, no sound of cars coming from a nearby street, not a single footstep from the occasional passer-by.  
Unconsciously, he edges closer to Sherlock.

"Be on your guard," the tall detective whispers, and just then, all street lamps flicker and die simultaneously, leaving only the faint red glow of Chinese paper lamps hanging outside the shops.  
Seconds later, John feels something whisk past his face, followed by a stinging sensation and the warm trickle of blood.

Sherlock rolls up his left coat sleeve and opens the buttons on his shirt to reveal the tattoo a large symbol running over the entirety of his underarm.  
He closes his eyes and held onto his exposed arm with the other hand.  
John sees the lines of the symbol flare up as if there are fresh burns, etching Sherlock's skin red, until suddenly his hand begins to spasm uncontrollably and a whole sword just rips free from Sherlock's hand.

The man gives a short, pained groan, but other than that, he sustains no injury. The sword has a heavy-looking handle , metal twisting around it as if braided, but the most impressive, if not frightening part is the long blade, sharp as the edges of a saw on both sides, gleaming even in the darkness.

"You need to hide," he tells John and motions to one of the cars parked nearby,  
"Without a weapon, there is nothing you can do right now."

"I have a--" John starts to protest, but Sherlock shakes his head urgently.

"A gun with normal bullets is just as useful against a demon as pebbles are against a tiger."

He grips his sword tight, his body strung like a wire, and John glances around nervously, dabbing at the blood on his cheek.

Something sharp cuts the air once again, but this time John hears it early enough to throw himself on the ground, crawling toward the car frantically.  
When he peeks around the side of the car, he sees Sherlock in a battle of wills against a demon with blades for both hands and feet, his body long, bones and joints sharply protruding from tautly stretched skin. His long tongue lolls from his head, and his stare is unhindered by eyelids and made expressionless by the absence of brows.

There is the sharp screeching of blade against blade, and Sherlock's knees wobble before he throws the demon of and dives in after him with a swift swing, which is also blocked sharply.  
He rolls out of the way of blades going for his ankles, swiping at the demon's head, who pulls back with a roar that sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Sherlock is fast but so is the beast, and he is being blocked at every turn, John can see that. He frantically tries to come up with something, anything to help, then remembers his gun.  
It might not be enough to inflict any damage, but it can still serve as a distraction, John thinks as he pulls it from the back of his trousers and unlocks the safety.

He aims so that there is no danger of harming Sherlock, and pulls the trigger. The demon gives an angry howl when it is hit by the bullet, and turns its head wildly.  
John doesn't know what exactly possesses him in that moment, but he pops his head out for long enough to be seen, before disappearing back behind the car.

The demon, once having caught sight of this new target, charges at the car, crushing its blades into the metal construction and trapping John between the vehicle and the store front of a newsagents behind him.  
The pressure increases, and for a panicked moment, John thinks he is going to get crushed, until he feels the car lurch into the opposite direction - the demon has noticed that its claws have gotten stuck.

"John, keep your head down!" he hears Sherlock call, and then he hears a blood curling scream and feel something wet splatter onto his head from above.  
Sherlock has thrown his sword like a giant, double edged boomerang, severing the head of the creature until coming to a halt embedded in the iron curtain used to close the shop.  
Blood from the blade has dripped down onto John, and he hurries back from behind the car, too shocked and out of breath to be disgusted.

Sherlock limps towards the remains of the demon, checking for any signs of life.  
A severed head does not necessary mean death to them, but thankfully, it seems to do the trick for this one.  
John watches him stagger, clearly in pain, and comes running closer.  
The other man is clenching his arm, and where before there was none, there is now a wound the size of a table tennis ball in his left palm, bleeding furiously.

"Sherlock, what--" John gasps, and makes to grasp for him, but Sherlock draws his arm away, trying to keep it out of reach.

"There is nothing you can do. I knew this would happen," he says, and his voice sounds strained, as if he is fighting a tremendous amount of pain but to proud to let it affect him.

"Let me at least look at it," John tries again, and gets to touch Sherlock during a moment of inattentiveness on the other's part.

He feels it again then, the sudden surge and burn he felt at the club, as if he's just received a minor electric shock, making the hair on his arms stand up all the same.  
The blooding seeping out of Sherlock's wound and down his arm that was painting his flesh red now seems to run backwards, back into his body, and instead of letting go in surprise like last time, John holds on, watching the wound close slowly.

"John," Sherlock mumbles, nearly inaudible, and John lets go of his arm, smooth and whole again.

"You're welcome."

He smiles, before slumping down to his knees next to Sherlock.

The street lamps flicker back to life.

**

Sherlock clearly remembers the day he got his sword, because with everything he has experienced so far, everything he has seen, that was the moment that started it all.

At 17, there was no way out. Ever since seeing his first ghost at age 12, the night had brought Sherlock only terror, the day only uncertainty.  
He had always thought himself intelligent, despite Mycroft's insistence to the opposite. He saw other people just the way his brother did, and he knew he had intellectually surpassed them a long time ago and saw no merit in it - being better than others inspires spite and jealousy, especially among children, and Sherlock, who had no desire to make himself any smaller for the benefit of others, became increasingly lonely until it became a state of being he just resigned himself to.

He hid at night, and he hid during the day, and nothing ever changed, nothing except the terrors growing sharper, the demons increasing their visits and taunts, playing with him like a cat would with a weakened mouse.

The drugs helped him not to see, not to care. His world became permanently blurry at the edges, everything turning into molasses, his focus momentarily sharpened until sleep overtook him, not the kind of sleep he was used to, but complete, utterly peaceful darkness.

Yet, it became harder and harder to chase that feeling, his body craving more, and failing him when he provided it.  
The day he finally overdosed, when it came, seemed inevitable.  
He has no memory of how it happened or when, only his parent's and Mycroft's recollections, which are all frustratingly sketchy and coloured with sentiment, but they all agree in one point.

Sherlock died.

On the way to the hospital, his heart stopped beating, leaving him in death's clutches for two minutes. It wasn't Gabriel then, who came to lead him to the gates of heaven. There was no white light, and no warmth, instead there he was, reeling, having been ripped from hid body violently, amidst the burning rubble of a London below.  
He was in Hell.

Two minutes on earth are lifetimes to lost souls in Hell, where nothing but punishment awaits them.  
Sherlock wandered aimlessly, hiding from ghouls whose entire head was a mouth of sharp teeth and slimy tongues, and he lost his sense of time, and all sense of smell, he stopped feeling, and he stopped seeing.  
Whenever he couldn't escape, his body was torn apart, only to be restored again, and there was no reason to speak, so he stopped speaking, and no reason to think, so he stopped thinking.

_Contrapasso_ \- those who feel everything in life are punished with the loss of all feeling in death.  
Sherlock's worst nightmare had come true, there was no more purpose to his existence.

After two minutes, two centuries, two millennia, a hand reached for him as he lay torn on the ground, a heap of broken flesh and bones, a mass of blood with a still heartbeat, breathing out another last breath.

"I have faith in you," she said, embracing him with silky wings and bathing him in light.  
Sherlock doesn't remember her face, only the soft touch of life she gave him, and her name, a name he would forget neither in life nor in death.

She was Uriel, and she offered him redemption.

"You have eyes that see all," she told him, "...and yet you fail to see your own path."

Uriel came down to rescue him, but angels away from heaven are no longer immortal, and Hell fought for Sherlock's soul.  
Life began to cling to Sherlock and pull once more, and he watched on helplessly rising above the battlefield.

He would later wake up, the symbols running all over his arm, and it wasn't until he met Gabriel that Sherlock found out what happened to the angel who came to rescue him.

"My sister fell that day. She will be reborn, and yet she will not be the same. You were selfish to take your own, and you have caused as much grief in our father's halls as you have in your own," Gabriel told him.  
"But she chose you to be her disciple, and gave you the power to redeem yourself. You are tainted by Hell, and once you die, Hell will claim back what belongs to it, unless you redeem yourself."

"I am already working on it," Sherlock said, having become a hunter by then, but Gabriel shook her head.

"You can tell yourself that, but revenge is not the same as redemption."

Sherlock accepted the sword of part of his body, every blow would hurt him as if he used his first to strike, and the wound from summoning it would close only slowly, leaving him drained and half mad with pain.  
It was some kind of curse, he was sure of it, but he was able to live with it because it was a small price to pay for being alive once again.

No one had ever been able to help him remove the sword or help heal the wounds, and yet John, who a few days ago came across a demonic being for the first time, who was none of these half-baked wiccans or Satanists, had closed his wound just like that.

After healing Sherlock, he fainted, and carrying him away from the scene, taking in his ruined appearance and the gash on his cheek, Sherlock allows himself to feel the warm spark of gratitude and wonder and feel both foreign and blissful.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! As the fic goes with quite a few warnings from the get go, I might not mention them separately all the time, just be aware that this specific chapter goes with a trigger warning for suicide, please and thank you.  
> Unrelated side note: I have a tumblr, and made a small soundtrack mix to accompany this fic which you can download [HERE](http://thorinjin.tumblr.com/post/76782887483/the-balance-a-music-mix-accompanying-proxy-war).  
> All of it is music I regularly listen to when writing this. Well, actually it's a smidgeon of my actual writing soundtrack, but... well. Enjoy.

It takes John longer this time to remember where he is.  
It is quiet around him, no - it's completely silent, which should make him nervous, but it just serves to relax him enough to lie in bed and stare at the ceiling for a while longer.

Memories start flooding back to him, things he can't make sense of but knows have happened, and when he turns his head to look out of the window he sees the soft hues of the approaching morning.  
He slept for a really long time, then.

John shifts and is surprised at his own wince. All of his muscles seem to have cramped up, leaving him sore all over. He groans and squeezes his eyes shut reflexively, until a short moment later, he hears footsteps coming his way and Sherlock appears in the doorway.

He looks... worried, and uncertain, much softer than John has seen him before, and when he approaches the bed he's all limbs, his natural grace lost for a few steps.

"Are you alright?" he asks shakily, and it's all so foreign that John has to huff out a laugh.  
"John," Sherlock growls much more sternly, "Are you alright?"

"Yes," John finally answers hoarsely, "Yes, I am alright, you nutter."

The mild insult, meant to stop Sherlock treating John like porcelain, produces an entirely unexpected reaction.

"Move in with me," Sherlock rushes out breathlessly, as if he's been holding it in for a while.

John frowns at him, albeit mildly.

"Well, that was unexpected."

"I mean..."

Sherlock rounds the bed as John slowly pushes himself into a sitting position,

"That thing... That thing you did was good and..."

"...Are you thanking me?"

"And," Sherlock continues, pointedly glancing away from John's lopsided grin,  
"You seem to have developed an annoying habit of falling unconscious on me and requiring transport. I was thinking about methods to make your flat safe once again, barriers maybe, but there is nothing worth protecting and..."

John's heart gives a weird thud. Sherlock Holmes, a man he's just met a couple of days ago, might just have told John he would like to keep him close.  
It's probably not a grand gesture, Sherlock isn't sentimental enough for those, but John finds he may just be the type of person attracted by a proposition to fight demons together.

He's not just some army doctor, thank you, that much has been established the day before, but John feels as if he is now getting to know a whole new person, someone who still goes by the name of John Watson, but otherwise has no similarities with the person he used to know.

Harry always seemed to know exactly who she was, unapologetic about all her flaws to a point that sometimes seemed ridiculous even to John, but she hadn't doubted her instincts for even a second.

_I can see everything, John, and everything can see me._

Oh, how it all makes sense now.

"It's okay," John mumbles, "Thanks, Sherlock."

Sherlock blinks at him.

"Does that mean you'll...?"

John just nods at him, oblivious to Sherlock's small smile.

"You'll be safe here," Sherlock tells him, "It's because of my reputation that demon's usually don't attack."  
John looks up sharply.

"What do you mean by 'usually'?"

"Well." Sherlock looks almost put out to admit a weakness.  
"Clearly we were attacked yesterday."

It turns out that being a ghost has so far not stopped Mrs. Hudson from nagging Sherlock to sometimes put food into his cupboards, and so John has a cup of tea with some buttered toast while Sherlock sits in the chair opposite of him, trying for all the world to look as if he's not staring.

"Ok," John eventually sighs, "Out with it."

The words start to practically gush forward.

"There was a reason we went to see Mycroft, John. I know, he seems like a simpleton, and he's chosen to unbelievably dull and quite frankly hazardous occupation for himself, but he is something of a regent over a few lesser demons."

John nods his acknowledgement.

"Ok."

"I wanted him to send one of his down to hell to look for your sister, but since he's been unhelpful as usual and I have since become exceptionally curious, I've decided to go myself."

John can't help his frown of irritation.

"Let me get this straight, you want to enter hell out of curiosity?"

"I have no connection to your sister whatsoever. You didn't expect me to follow her case up because I'm a good Samaritan?"

It's not quite a sneer, but close enough to it to make a hot spike of anger travel up John's throat like bile. Sherlock is right, of course. Not in a hundred years John would have expected... this when he wanted the death of his sister investigated, but coming from Sherlock's mouth, all of it, everything he and his brother explained to John so far, still oddly sounds like a game.  
There must be more to it, something Sherlock isn't telling John, something more private than the tidbits of information John now has of him, and he isn't sure he wants to know yet.

"What would you have to do?" John asks, ignoring Sherlock's comment and filing it away for a future conversation. For now, if Sherlock only wants to be something of a supernatural private detective, that's okay with John.  
They have been flatmates for half an hour, there is no need to go prying.

"Die."

John gapes for a moment.

"You heard me. It would be the perfect opportunity to test your new found skills. If you heal me the moment my heart gives out, it should all be fine."

John still has nothing to contribute.

Sherlock looks exasperated, which eventually convinces John that there will be no further explanations and he can say either yes or no.

"How do we know you won't stay dead?" he asks, and the smile Sherlock gives him is oddly reassuring.

"I trust you in that regard."

John huffs slightly in disbelief, but it's more at himself than at Sherlock - a simple declaration like that shouldn't be enough, but it is.

**

They end up in front of the door to Sherlock's room, the tall detective ready to disappear within, while John still battles with a sudden but understandable bout of anxiety. He has asked Sherlock several times in the past few minutes why he has to wait out

"You don't want to see this. I know you're a doctor, but you will be mad at me."

"What, for killing yourself?"

John tries to make it sound like a joke, but the lump in his throat makes his voice come out broken and his face turn into a bitter grimace.

"John, you have power," Sherlock tells him, letting a hand rest on his shoulder, which only serves to remind the other man of the height differences between them.

It's like being back in Afghanistan, where John learnt it was entirely different to shoot at real people instead of wooden targets. he had always known it would be different, had even expected it to be hard, and even for a long time after John always told himself he'd simply done the necessary thing.

Sometimes however, words and reassurances make nothing better.

He hated how even killing could become something to get used to, how the pangs of guilt and repulsion were soon nothing but after tastes to be expected.  
Could this be the same, when death, a heart ceasing to beat, suddenly becomes nothing other than a necessary risk?

"I'll be there," John says, more to calm himself than Sherlock.

Sherlock nods at him before he opens the door and closes it behind him.

It takes less than two minutes before John hears a groan of pain and the thud of Sherlock's body hitting the floor, and he decides to not wait to see if that was the signal.

**

Dying, entering hell, does not feel like your ghost separates from your body, leaving the earthly plane behind slowly and unawares.  
It is the feeling of your stomach bottoming out, the painful last squeeze of your cardiac muscles, your body being dragged through the solid ground beneath it while it keeps resisting the inevitable.  
It is pain, so much pain, until there is only resignation.

Sherlock will never forget this feeling, but this time, he has to resist, mindful of the task he has to fulfil.  
It will take less than a minute for John to bring him back, but only if he doesn't get lost on the way, with the absence of time in Hell grinding any determination to a stop.

Even though Hell has wrecked its streets and buildings, Sherlock knows he is still in London, and can still find the way to St. Bart's.

He can see the Thames from where he is, now nothing but a raging pool of blood, dirt and desperation. The only thing he has to do is follow it and make sure the ghouls don't catch him, the pain they can cause him would be enough to keep him where he is.

After he has climbed over rubble and lost his footing in the cracked up pavement for a while, Sherlock notices the quick footsteps that is a pack of ghouls running down the street into his direction, and ducks into the remains of a building.  
When the creatures have run past without any incident, Sherlock takes the time to look around and recognises the crumbling arch of Vaudeville Theatre above him.  
This means an estimated walk of one point five miles to the hospital, which isn't far, but the quickest route leads past a lot of tube stations, something of a preferred hideout for the creatures of hell.

He leaves the building and starts running.

Sherlock makes it to New Oxford Street before he tires from the near endless crashing of cars driven by suicidal people, other cutting their own throats in alleyways.

He tries to concentrate, tries to remember why he was punished to spend so much time here again, it must have been days by now, his feet dragging slower and slower, as if concrete shoes are sapping the last of his strength right out of his muscles.

There is a vague image of someone, a person carrying the warm light that reminded him so much of Uriel, someone who definitely wasn't there before...

It's like a whisper in the wind, but Sherlock can hear someone shouting his name, but when he raises his head to listen more closely, a ghoul is jumping at him from one of the pillars holding what used to be a shop for sports equipment.

Sherlock is pushed onto his stomach, claws immediately digging into his back.  
He hears the jaw muscles of the beast muscles stretch beyond capacity, bones popping, but the claws are still scratching at his back, but are not digging further in, but it is enough to draw blood, which welling to the surface in a slow trickle.

It's then that he hears the voice calling his name again, and he remembers, how could he have forgotten John?

He pushes himself up on his elbows until he has both hands resting firmly on the ground, then flips himself over.  
The ghoul screeches and tries to bite at him, but only catches a few locks of Sherlock's hair until it hits the ground , Sherlock leaning back to knock their heads together backwards.  
He then get up as fast as he can, his back burning like fire, and starts to run in earnest.

After a short moment of confusion, the ghoul howls and follows him, its claws steadily clattering on the concrete.  
Some of his followers lose interest after a while, or they find a more helpless meal, but Sherlock doesn't dare stop now, not when he he notices the fluttering of dirty blond hair on the rooftop of the hospital as soon as he turns the corner at Charterhouse Street.

The building is as rotten as all the others, and on his way up the many stairs and through the building, Sherlock's foot breaks through the floor more than once., while dirt and dust stain his face, his hands, his clothes.

Finally, he reaches the top.

Harriet is in the hospital gown, just like the night she died, and there is a soft breeze that ruffles her hair.  
She abruptly turns around and look Sherlock square in the eye, something he is sure she could not have anticipated during the moment of her death. She isn't simply reliving events. No, Harriet Watson is still in control, just like Sherlock is.

There is no way to take her for anything but John's sister. With her round face and the deep-set nose, down to the soft brown flecks of heterochromia in her eyes, she could almost have been his twin.  
Sherlock feels no warmth about her though, not the way John seems to exude it, the way that it is mingled with his very aura.

Harriet smiles at him.

"I've been waiting for you."

Sherlock just narrows his eyes at her.

"Oh, they tell stories about you, even down here. She takes a step forward, glancing over the edge of the building.

"How can you be so calm?" Sherlock asks her.

"Don't worry, you're not weak for giving up in a place like this. I simply knew what awaited me."

Sherlock understands perfectly. Harriet jumped.

She glances to the left, but Sherlock can't see anyone. 

"...And you will leave him alone?" she asks, and this has to be part of the memory, because Harriet isn't looking at Sherlock at all.

She sharply turns back to him.

"He said this way I could save John," Harry says, and her voice suddenly sounds choked with tears she never shed. She's speaking faster now, over the edge with both feet and spreading her arms slowly.  
"That there couldn't be both of us. I spent so much time protecting Johnny, so he wouldn't have to see. He was my little brother, and I loved him."  
She looks away from Sherlock, down onto the street, then rips something off her neck and flings it away from her.  
Sherlock catches it.

"God forgot about you, Harriet. He forgot to make it right," she murmurs, and "I love you, Johnny."

Then she turns around and jumps, back first, off the hospital roof.


End file.
